LA Story
February 25th, 2009 . 5:31 pm . By: Buzz Carrick
With apologies to Steve Martin, I have a little LA story to tell. Round about the time of the MLS Combine I wrote a little piece called 120 Fahrenheit: Slamming the Combine about why I felt the combine was still important. Toward the end of said commentary, I stated my opinion that Ruud Gullit’s ignoring of the combine last year contributed to their poor MLS SuperDraft. “Ruud Gullit spent all last year’s combine chatting up Thomas Rongen and not watching, just how well did their draft and year go?” was the exact quote in the piece. I proceeded to get hammered by a bunch of (apparent) LA fans about how good their draft was. The common argument seemed to be “Franklin is great, Ely Allen and McDonald were good contributors. That makes a good draft” My counterargument ran something like “You can’t judge a draft after one season, LA had zero cap room, was forced to play those players, and not shockingly stunk. Those players would not have seen the field for anyone else in MLS. Yes Franklin is good but as the 4th pick he should be good. You don’t get points for getting a 4th pick right, you get destroyed for getting it wrong.” So why do I bring it up again? Cause Ely Allen and Brandon McDonald were waived today by LA. Not to kick a team when they are down, but it is the mid tier picks and their success or not that make for a great/good/average/bad draft. Early picks you better get right, it’s the middle guys that make or break a team in the SuperDraft. And those picks are often helped or hurt by scouting the MLS Combine. Which was the point I was trying to make about LA and Gullit. 4 Comments Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI Leave a comment |
Well, I agree with what you said about Ely Allen, but Brandon McDonald is a player that I like very much and see a lot of potential in. Unfortunately, it won’t be realized in L.A.
I also believe this has more to do with Bruce wanting to bring in as many of his players as possible, and with the freshly limited rosters, there’s bound to be a few decent players that get cut.
I’d like to think that’s what happened with B-Mac, but I didn’t watch him train everyday and maybe Bruce saw something he didn’t like. Even though I think it’s gonna bite us later on, I’ll give Arena the benefit of the doubt for now.
story = self call
last comment = troll
I understand your logic, because no one ever cut by LA has ever gone on to a good career.